The Irish republican leader and socialist James Connolly has been named one of the world’s greatest revolutionaries by The Guardian newspaper.
Connolly, one of the seven signatories of the 1916 Proclamation and one of the three to sign the document of surrender, was born in Scotland to Irish parents.
He first came to Ireland when aged 14, as a member of the British army, serving in Dublin, Cork, and the Curragh in Co Kildare.
Having spent several years in the US at the beginning of the 20th century, Connolly returned to Ireland to focus on the rights of workers, working alongside James Larkin. In 1912, he would found the Labour Party, and played a central role in the Lock-out of 1913.
During the Easter Rising, Connolly served under Pearse, becoming Commandant-General in the siege of the GPO, and was wounded badly before the site was evacuated. On May 12th, 1916, prison authorities in Kilmainham Gaol strapped the injured Connolly to a chair, before executing him by firing squad.
Writing in the Guardian, journalist Ed Vulliamy described Connolly as “insufficiently regarded among the great European revolutionaries of all time.
“No one has entwined the politics of labour and of national liberation like Connolly,” writes Vulliamy.
Mary Harris ‘Mother’ Jones, once described as ‘the most dangerous woman in America’, who had left Co Cork for Canada during the Famine, was also named in the top 10 list. A dressmaker and schoolteacher, Harris Jones was an active trade unionist and founded the ‘Industrial Workers of the World’ movement.
